What the orphans saw

That the orphans of Bryn see are paintings, rides, unicorns fighting with clouds and catsand strange animals that look like a cross between giraffes and Salvador Dalì‘s elephants with very thin legs.

If you go to see the show, be careful: Bryn set the environment so that you are at twilight, with very little light available.

Darkness holds little secrets

Serve, this poor light, to encourage an orphans game of hide-and-seek, to make their presence and their secrets more intimate, to make their imagination fly outside the physical limits of the orphanage and their condition.

This at least is what I saw there, you go to see and tell me what feelings has caused you.

15 years of Second Life have not passed in vain

It is a pleasure to see that despite 15 years of activity and despite the hype for Second Life has died and buried long ago, Linden Lab’s platform is still a prolific environment in terms of the creativity of its most active users. So another 15 of these years, Second Life (and congratulations to Bryn Oh, as always).

I must confess, I had to wait the post of Bryn Oh about the closing, in the next weeks (I think for the end of October), of the exhibition Imogen and the pigeons, opened at early 2013 in Second Life, arter having attracted over 50 thousand visitors from all the world, to finally find time to visit it.

The problem with a virtual world, even if I am involved since years, is that it’s a “competitor” of real life in the use of free time of everybody and since in these years of crisis of really “free” time there is always less (at least for me, since I am busy trying to make ends meet) here is that even leisure and pleasure that can come to visit art installations, attend events, experiment with new devices and technologies, or simply “wasting time” chatting and admiring dreams graphics through the video of my pc is always less.

Imogen and the pigeons is by the way a beautiful “immersive and emotional” exhibition (to cite Honour McMillan) of an artist that I had the opportunity to admire several times in recent years, for example at the Italian land MiC-Im@aginarium managed by Mexi Lane (aka Marina Bellini) and so I can only advise you to hurry if you still have not seen it and do a day trip to Immersiva and deal with the new artist proof of Bryn.

A test which seems to me to resume and bring further forward the “artistic figure” seen yet in Anna many murdersand in Family Unit, the journey of the visitor in (literally as you move from a “box” to another) and the journey of the artist, with an upward motion through a labyrinth of rooms, works and atmospheres different from each other but united by a certain twilight mood.

I don’t wanna bore you, Imogen and the pigeons is to live in first person more than to tell, so if you have not seen it yet, or if you were not having had time to see it (if you read this piece after the end of the installation), I leave you with a video uploaded on Youtube by the same Canadian artist who in announcing the forthcoming closure of the installation and removal has already made it known that he wants to work for a new project that I hope we can all enjoy early, RL allowing.

In times of crisis can crowdfunding be a real alternative to finance a credible project in such fields as art, games, music, movies or web? It seems so and it would seem that it can be forsome individual projects that niche of the web called virtual worlds. A niche that still has a stable interest by artists, graphic designers, film makers and creatives in general, although so far failed to become that “mass” environment that had initially hoped to be, either because of technical limitations of the platforms developed to date either because of obvious strategic and marketing mistakes made by companies more involved as Linden Lab or Avatar Reality.

Yet the basic idea remains valid, to create low-cost environments where the contents are generatedby users, with a high resolution 3D graphics that facilitates the “suspension of disbelief“, a mechanism to create great role-playing games or interactive narratives in which the narrators are both spectators and vice versa. A proof has come in these days represented by the events that happenedt to the Canadian artist (in RL a Toronto painter) known in Second Lifeas Bryn Oh: her most famous land, Immersiva, had apparently been deleted before Christmas, and then go back online a few days ago at the same time with the launching, by Bryn, of a fundraising to supportthe artist, on the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo.

Bryn, who until recently has also exhibited at MiC, has been given herself 60 days to collect 5,400 US dollars, so to be able to keep the sim online for another year (the fees cost 300 US dollars a month, a figure that Bryn said could not spend any longer for this project). The surprising thing is that after just 5 days had already been donated over 6,300 US dollars, demonstrating that there is even a small (but rich) niche of users willing to pay in order to qualify for (and not exclusively) quality artistic contents online.

Note that Bryn has used the platform IndieGoGo proposing various ways to contribute to her project, such as purchasing (autographed) hardcover copies of the book Anna’s Many Murder, or copies of its virtual sculpture Rabbicorn (or a different one if you prefer), rather than and ink on paper illustration of a character of her novels or an oil painting on canvas, always inspired by one of her characters.

Is ongoing until October 12, 2011 at the island of Mic (Musei in Comune Roma) the artistic installation “Family Unit” of Canadian artist known as Bryn Oh in Second Life, about which spoke even the Italian edition of Vogue in an article in which Simona Lamonaca recalls how Bryn (in RL a painter in Toronto) has recently received a scholarship from the Canadian government aimed at the continuation of her “virtual” artistic trail already known to the general public through the success of installations such as Immersiva and Anna’s Many Murdersof which Mondivirtuali.it spoke some times ago.

I personally believe Bryn is one of the most interesting artists among those who still use the digital platform of LindenLab, as confirm this installation in which the artist seems to use a more delicate and “intimate” touch than usual, perhaps because of the theme, her family unit. In her blog Bryn explain: “It was an interesting challenge to create a build for Musei in Comune di Roma because it was to be based around a machinima of the build rather than the actual 3D inworld creation”. Bryn Oh adds that many of her works are made for the experience of navigating the 3D environment and then a machinima is created to catalogue or narrate the build. “So this build is a hybrid of something for the resident of the virtual world who will enjoy the open ended exploration (of the installation, LP)with the other importance of it being composed for the real life machinima showcase in the Museum”. Digital art, therefore, comes from Linden Lab’s proprietary platform and installation becomes real, continuing a discourse that has accompanied all of the interactive installations and exhibitions managed in recent years first at ExperienceItaly and then at the MiC by the team of Mexi Lane (aka Marina Bellini).

An artistic installation once again very interesting that I recommend you visit, with a little “help“: if you want to discover all Bryn’s relatives you have to go all the way to the exhibition, through the tunnel at the end of which light is visible and, being careful not to fall, go poised skyward until you reach a sort of “virtual paradise” where the Canadian artist has placed the representation of his grandparents while listening to the radio the George Bernard Show‘s voice. Further confirmation of the ability of electronic media to stir emotions in the artist who knows how to use (those who know and admire the result) on a par with other “mediums” such as marble, canvas or film. To visit the exhibition, here’s a handy “teleport“.

Why Second Life? Because is a platform that allows not only to create but to share contents created by others, contents from art to role-playing, contents created through a 3D graphics which in itself is not the absolute “top” graphics technology (no more at least), but it is accessible to a very large number of users since over five years and continues to attract content creators and artists from around the world.

I was thinking about this when an e-mail of Marina Bellini (aka Mexi Lane in SL), curator for the Musei in Roma Capitale of many “virtual” extensions of real exhibitions held in the Capitoline museums in recent years, from the centenary of Futurist manifesto to Michelangelo, and animator of meetings and events dedicated to various issues at the island of MiC(that ideally has taken the baton of the disappeared Experience Italy) reported to me a new installation of Bryn Oh, one of the most important artists of the digital art that the Linden Lab’s platform allowed in these years of experience (creator inter alia of the land Immersiva ofwhich we have spoken here).

The installation in question, recently opened, is entitled “Anna’s Many Murders” (Marina/Mexi talked about on Piùblog) and is able to fully exploit the three-dimensionality and the possibility of setting environment offered by the platform, with a remarkable richness of detail and skill of the artis to create the different scenes each with its own sounds and lights (in addition to the works, often changing with each passing minute). The public, as always happens when a proposal is whorth, comes in dribs and drabs, all the way to visit the installation without that any “mainstream” media was concerned to report the event, in Italy and abroad (to my knowledge).

So in the end as well as to thank Marina for the buzz, I wonder if the periodic controversies between the “Italian community” of Second Life users and the media themselves have some basis beyond personal susceptibility, or if you are not he conditioned reflex a number of limits that the Country is touching with its hands in recent months, waking up, perhaps, from a long sleep in which it seemed to fall for too many years (sleep in which the culture was almost completely absent, but not limited to the discourse of new technologies and virtual worlds).

Who knows: in the meantime you can visit the installation of Bryn, if you like the idea, following the teleport button below.

Immersiva, the land created by Bryn Oh, is one of the most photographed sim of the entire Second Life (and if you visit it you will understand why). Just an advice: before landing at Immersiva, save the environment setting that Bryn herself (http://brynoh.blogspot.com) suggested to adopt from the page of the blog of Bettina Tizzy (Npirl), the result will be worthwhile. Down you see the setting, should you prefer to save it soon.

Questo sito utilizza cookie tecnici e di profilazione propri e di terze parti per le sue funzionalità e per inviarti pubblicità e contenuti in linea coi tuoi gusti e interessi. Chiudendo questo messaggio, scorrendo la pagina o cliccando qualunque suo elemento acconsenti all'uso dei cookie per le finalità indicate.
This site uses cookies and technical profiling of its own and third parties for its functionality and to send you advertising and content in line with your tastes and interests. By closing this message, scrolling the page or clicking any of its elements you consent to the use of cookies for the purposes indicated.OKRejectMore on Cookies